4 The Hippias Major, Plato’s authentic Socrates – with reference to the Parmenides

After the debacle of Hippias’ third attempt to define beauty, Socrates takes over: ‘”My worthy Socrates”, he [Socrates’ questioner, interlocutor, i.e. his critical inner self] says, “don’t give answers of that kind, and in that way – they are silly, easily torn to rags; but consider this suggestion. In one of our answers a little while ago we got hold of, and expressed, the idea that gold is beautiful and not beautiful according as it is placed in an appropriate setting; and similarly with everything else to which this qualification can be added. Now consider this appropriateness (to prepon), and reflect on the general nature of the appropriate, and see whether it might not be beauty.”’ (293d6-e5)

Before exploring this new development, I must take issue with Jowett’s ‘the general nature of the appropriate’ for Socrates’ tȇn phusin autou tou prepontos, which simply means ‘the nature of the appropriate itself’. In Plato’s Parmenides the very young Socrates (sphodra neos, 127c4-5) conceived Ideas (eidȇ, R.E. Allen’s ‘characters’), viewing them as general forms. To these he attributed true being, thus challenging Parmenides’ thesis that all is one and Zeno’s thesis that things can’t be many (127e-128b). Parmenides exposed his theory to criticism on the grounds of this ‘generality’, which is liable to infinite regress: ‘I suppose you think that each character (eidos)  is one for some such reason as this: when some plurality of things seem to you to be large, there perhaps seem to be one characteristic (idea) that is the same when you look over them all, whence you believe that large is one.’ – Socrates: ‘True.’ – Parmenides: ‘What about the large itself (auto to mega) and the other larges (kai t’alla ta megala)? If with your mind you should look over them all in like manner, will not some one large (hen ti mega) again appear, by which they all appear large?’ – Socrates: ‘It seems so.’ – Parmenides: ‘So another character (eidos) of largeness will have made its appearance, alongside the largeness itself and the things which have a share of it;  and over and above all those, again, a different one, by which they will all be large. And then each of the characters will no longer be one for you (kai ouketi dȇ hen hekaston soi tȏn eidȏn estai), but unlimited in multitude.’ (132a1-b2)

Socrates’ ‘nature of the appropriate itself’ avoids the infinite regress to which his immature forms were liable. Parmenides nevertheless ended his criticism with a conclusion that appears to have determined Socrates’ thinking ever since: ‘Nevertheless, if in light of all the present difficulties and others like them, Socrates, one will not allow that there are characters of things that are (mȇ easei eidȇ tȏn ontȏn einai), and refuses to distinguish as something a character of each single thing (mȇde ti horieitai eidos henos hekastou), he will not even have anything to which to turn his mind, since he will not allow that there is a characteristic, ever the same, of each of the things that are (mȇ eȏn idean tȏn ontȏn hekastou tȇn autȇn aei einai); and so he will utterly destroy the power and significance of thought and discourse (kai houtȏs tȇn tou dialegesthai dunamin pantapasi diaphtherei). I think you are only too aware of that sort of consequence.’ – Socrates: ‘True (alȇthȇ legeis).’ (135b5-c4, translation R. E. Allen)

In the Hippias Major Plato presents us with Socrates who doesn’t view the forms as ‘general natures’ or ‘general characters’, he views each of them as unique something by which certain things are such-and-such. He cannot cease asking what that something is in each case, yet ‘to this very day’ (kai oudepȏ kai tȇmeron) he cannot find the answers (293c5-8).

To make this clear, let me go back to the moment when Socrates introduces his questioner, later identified as his critical inner self (son of Sophroniscus, 298b11, his ‘closest relative living in the same house’ [en tȏi autȏi oikȏn, 304d3-4, which means ‘dwelling in the same’ and can be understood as ‘dwelling in the same body’]). Hippias invited Socrates to a lecture on the honourable and beautiful practices (peri epitȇdeumatȏn kalȏn) which he is to give; Socrates promises to come ‘all being well’, and says: ‘But now answer me a trifling question on the subject; you have reminded me of it in the nick of time. Quite lately, my noble friend, when I was condemning as ugly (aischra) some things in certain compositions (en logois tisi, which can mean as well ‘in certain discussions’ or ‘in certain speeches’), and praising others as beautiful (kala), somebody threw me into confusion by interrogating me in a most offensive manner, rather to this effect: “You, Socrates, pray how do you know what things are beautiful (kala) and what are ugly (aischra)? Come now, can you tell me what beauty is (ti esti to kalon;)?” In my incompetence I was confounded, and could find no proper answer to give him; so, leaving the company, I was filled with anger and reproaches against myself, and promised myself that the first time I met with one of you wise men, I would listen to him and learn, and when I had mastered my lesson thoroughly, I would go back to my questioner and join battle with him again. So you see that you have come at a beautifully appropriate moment (eis kalon hȇkeis), and I ask you to teach me what is beauty by itself, answering my questions with the utmost precision you can attain; I do not want to be made to look a fool a second time by another cross-examination. Of course you know perfectly, and it is only a scrap of your vast learning.’ – Hippias: ‘A scrap indeed, Socrates; and of no value, I may add.’ (286b7-e6)

When Hippias agrees that Socrates can question him and criticise his answers in the name of the ‘offensive questioner’, Socrates says: ‘If you were to deliver to him the discourse to which you refer – the discourse about beautiful practices – he would hear you to the end; and when you stopped, the very first question he would put would be about beauty – it is this kind of habit with him; he would say “Stranger from Elis, is it not by justice that the just are just?’ Would you answer, Hippias, as if he were asking the question? – Hippias: ‘I shall answer that it is by justice.’ – Socrates: ‘Then this, namely justice, is definitely something.” – Hippias: ‘Certainly.’ – Socrates: “Again, it is by wisdom that the wise are wise, and by goodness (kai tȏi agathȏi) that all things are good (panta t’agatha agatha, ‘that all good things are good’?’ – Hippias: ‘Undoubtedly.’ – Socrates: ‘That is, by really existing things (Ousi ge tisi toutois) – one could scarcely say, “by things which have no real existence” (ou gar dȇpou mȇ ousi ge)?’ – Hippias: ‘Quite so (Ousi mentoi).’ – Socrates: ‘Then are not all beautiful things beautiful by beauty?’ – Hippias: ‘Yes, by beauty.’ – Socrates: ‘Which has a real existence (Onti ge tini toutȏi;).’ – Hippias: ‘Yes (Onti), what else do you think?’ – Socrates: “Then tell me,” stranger, he would say, “what is this thing, beauty”?’ (287b5-d3) Presenting the forms in this way, he makes them immune to the infinite regress, but he remains stuck in his philosophic ignorance in consequence.

Socrates’ ‘justice by which the just are just’ is something, it is something existing, and so it is open to the question ‘what is this justice by which the just are just’. The same is true of the other examples: ‘wisdom by which the wise are wise’, ‘the good by which all good things are good’ and ‘beauty by which all beautiful things are beautiful’. In the Hippias Major Socrates leaves the former three examples unexplored and compels Hippias to join him in looking for the answer to the question ‘what is this beauty by which all beautiful things are beautiful’. He cannot find the answer, but all the answers he proposes help to view ‘the beauty itself’ more definitely; it is not an indeterminate ‘something’. After examination, Socrates can reject the proposed answers, for his mind’s eye is all the time focussed on ‘the beauty itself’, however dimly he may perceive it; each such examination leaves him painfully aware that he does not know what beauty itself is, by virtue of which all beautiful things are beautiful.